


pass quietly

by solidsky (liquidsky)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:07:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23322184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liquidsky/pseuds/solidsky
Summary: the fact that i just shared my AO3 profile with my classmates might be an epic clown maneuver.more to the point: bryan, i tried.
Kudos: 3





	pass quietly

**Author's Note:**

> the fact that i just shared my AO3 profile with my classmates might be an epic clown maneuver. 
> 
> more to the point: bryan, i tried.

Nothing to say for his house. 

Easy enough to identify, the signs that he’s gone off the reservation—a steel clock, facing newspaper-covered glass panes, that hasn’t ticked in months, and the acrid smell of singed fabric clinging to the back of his one stained armchair. 

He doesn’t move much, nowadays. No point in it; looking out the window will tell you he’s among the few who can still see at all, and he’s hard of hearing, but closing his eyes he can nonetheless hear the slow slither from under his floorboards. Can’t quite tell whether it’s grown familiar. There’s no way of knowing, really, and all he can do is wait. He tried counting, before, under his breath, numbers masked by warm air. Never got to ten. He’s losing time, more and more, barely even worth stating. The slithering sound grows louder for a beat, _one, two, three_ and missing; it echoes slick and languid, so he braces for it. 

Feet pushed hard against the floor, hands pressed to his side. _One, two, three_ again before a series of touches, a glossy smear left on his ankle. Knees, thighs, belly. Shoulders, too, and he keeps his eyes closed until it slides over his lips to the side of his jaw. 

No time means no way of knowing what lasts and what doesn’t, but eventually it stops; the noise stretches across the room. He doesn’t look over his shoulder as he trudges to stand by the window, tracing faded vowels with his fingers. No need to look. Whoever can still see probably wishes they couldn’t, and hearing’s more trouble than it’s worth, when there is nothing but silence, silence, silence, before the nightmare begins. He’s no expert in nightmares—doesn’t dream anymore, in the space he has to offer lives instead a list of haphazardly numbered findings. Whos and whats and hows that he thought he knew, and for what it’s worth, he knows he doesn’t. None of them did, or do, or will. They’ll know things, slick slides up their limbs, a human curiosity not unlike the one that’s gotten them here in the first place. Not that he knows that’s what did it. A lot of the time, he’s all guesses. Not how science works, he doesn’t think; anyway, not like it makes a difference. 

Could not tell you how long he stands there for. He used to wonder, before, whether time was real. It doesn’t feel like it is. Not surprising, as nothing does. 

He’s still, silent, silent, silent until the slithering hums again. There are times—in rooms dark enough he thinks of nothing but nights—when he lets it. Time’s always skittering to a stop, if it ever moved at all, it seems. He stares at the letters, their hard shapes, eyelids drooping. It slides up the same path, smears easily left behind. When he dreams, he splays his hands and finds goop between his fingers, drags slimy palms over his catalogue of rational discoveries. A silly attempt at making space, and when he thinks of that now he strains against the slithering, rips the newspaper, glues his frosty nose to the dirty surface of the glass. 

No one in the streets—he hadn’t looked in a while, didn’t know what to expect. Too much he doesn’t know, he’s hard of hearing but it’s a loud fucking cacophony, the lack of anything that isn’t the slithering, growing louder the more it slides past his bony elbows, down the matted fabric of his work shirt. He doesn’t work anymore, no labs and even less lectures, and he still wears them. They are too tight now that his belly’s grown, but there’s nothing you can’t make space for if you’re trying hard enough. 

Truth is he’s stopped trying. Too much trying going on before, enough to last a lifetime and a half, however long there’s still to live. The glass shakes a little under his face, a movement so insignificant it could mean anything. If things were going to shatter, they would’ve done so by now. So instead he’s closing his eyes and breathing through his nose and pouring over the list—same one, should-be-forgotten, ought-to-be-left-behind. When he runs a hand through his hair it’s not quite dry, not oily either, an in-between texture, and he trails down and down and down. It’s always the same, anyway, no amount of water could help, and he’s sitting back down, patting his belly; stretching over nothing, all the time in the world and himself, too. 

Never one for balloons, him, and there goes something. There’s silence again, and he sits there. Still frame, faded picture. Without the newspapers, moonlight’s bleeding across the floor, shadows breaking and scattering. He’s got a frontrow seat to his neighbour's garden, where there’s no one for a second until there is. His vision can’t focus, and he’s blinking and blinking and blinking against a wetness, counting _one, two, three_ and missing, a hiss instead of a number, nothing he can think of, whatever’s out there is not a shape he knows to discern, and he knows that. _One, two, three_ , he tries again. Except he’s stopped trying, told himself he’d stopped trying, should have stopped trying. When he blinks again it’s thick, and there’s nothing there, and he’s hard of hearing, so the silence is silence until it isn’t. 

Then it’s a slithering.

**Author's Note:**

> this was a prompt fill for my creative writing group. 
> 
> "1. genre: cosmic horror;  
> 2\. themes: people start to go mad with visions of moon beings;  
> 3\. features: a group of investigators trying to get to the bottom of it;  
> 4\. rating: any."
> 
> i flipped it a little bit, as one does, mostly because i didn't feel i could write a bigger story, and this felt fun to do. so! there's that!


End file.
